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Presentations on European research infrastructure The presentations from the EC's Information Event On The First Calls For Proposals Under The E-Infrastructures Activity Of The 'Capacities' Specific Programme, FP7 (Brussels, February 6, 2007) are now online. Note that the EC is funding projects in "Scientific Digital Repositories" and the "Deployment of e-Infrastructures for scientific communities". (Thanks to N. Miradon.) Measuring the success of OA repositories Jingfeng Xiaa and Li Sunb, Assessment of Self-Archiving in Institutional Repositories: Depositorship and Full-Text Availability, Serials Review, March 2007 (accessible only to subscribers, at least so far). Thanks to William Walsh for the alert and for posting the abstract and an excerpt to the GSU Issues in Scholarly Communication blog. This is just the abstract:
PS: I'm using the URL that William Walsh used in his blog post, which only works for GSU-affiliated users. I'd get a general URL, valid for any subscriber, but Science Direct is down for maintenance at the moment. Update. Here's the DOI-based URL, which doesn't give non-subscribers access to the abstract, and here's the non-DOI-based URL, which gives everyone access to the abstract. Update. Also see Les Carr's detailed comments in this article. Update. This article has now been self-archived. Public funding for open courseware at Utah State U David Wiley, OCW and Legislative Funding, Iterating Toward Openness, March 2, 2007. Excerpt:
Jan Velterop, Challenge for open access, The Parachute, March 3, 2007. A long post pulling together and updating several of his recent listserv messages. Excerpt:
Comment. Stevan can speak for himself on Jan's seven major points, and already has (on the same listservs where Jan originally posted his messages). But because I defend OA mandates as well, I want to reply to Jan's final point about mandates as last resorts and the implied objection that they are too coercive for people with "liberal inclinations".
Update. Stevan has responded on the AmSci OA Forum to this version of Jan's message. Update. Jan has responded to my post above and I've replied to his response. Jack W. Smith, Issues Related to Open Access and Clinical Data Repositories, a public lecture at Rice University, March 2, 2007. The lecture will soon be available as a webcast. More reflections on the Brussels meeting Steve Hitchcock, Lack of fizzle at EC Brussels meeting disguises progress on OA, EPrints Insiders, March 2, 2007. Excerpt:
Best practice for archive managers: new articles first, past articles later Steve Hitchcock, Warning on repository legacy deposit burden, EPrints Insiders, March 2, 2007. Excerpt:
OA repository for cultural studies calls for contributions Gary Hall, Culture Machine: call for contributions, a post to the Cult-Stud list, March 1, 2007. Thanks to Underscore for the alert and for reproducing the message (otherwise accessible only to list subscribers). Hall is the co-editor of Culture Machine (an OA journal of cultural studies) and director of the Cultural Studies Open Access Archive (CSeARCH).
Update. CSeARCH seems to accept articles for deposit, i.e. for local hosting. But Klaus Graf reports that he has been unable to find any locally-hosted articles, just links to externally hosted articles. Recommendation for OA data on global warming A new study of global warming from the European Science Foundation - Marine Board recommended international cooperation on an OA database. From the ESF-Marine press release (March 2, 2007):
Another CERN experiment endorses OA publishing Jens Vigen tells me that today the Collaboration Board of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at CERN adopted the same statement on OA publishing adopted last week by CERN's ATLAS experiment. The CMS experiment involves 2,300 scientists from 159 scientific institutes in 36 countries. Its OA statement isn't yet online. Economics is a new "open-access, open-assessment" journal. (Thanks to Ulrich Poeschl.) From the site:
Springer persuaded that Google Book Search increases sales Springer: More Than 29,000 Titles Live In Google Book Search, a press release from Springer, March 1, 2007.
The American Philological Association (APA) has launched a $4 million fund-raising campaign. It says it plans to spend $2 million on a "digital portal" to create "new tools for scholars everywhere to access primary source materials". But it never quite tells us whether it will offer open access or priced online access. (Thanks to Stoa Consortium.) Comment. If OA is part of the plan, then the APA shouldn't be shy about saying so. Saying so should help the fund-raising campaign. My guess is that classicists are much more likely to contribute to a portal of OA literature than a portal of priced literature. OA data mashups with Swivel and Many Eyes Declan Butler, Data sharing: the next generation, Nature, March 1, 2007. Excerpt:
South Korea's open/closed repository Going open: advice from the dCollection, iCommons blog, March 2, 2007. Excerpt:
PS: Most archiving software, and certainly the two leaders (EPrints and DSpace), give authors the choice to limit or even close access. Australia adopts repository-based research assessment Steve Hitchcock, Australia takes all-electronic, repository based route to research assessment, Eprints Insiders, March 2, 2007. Excerpt:
PS: Just to be explicit, this is good news because it gives researchers one more (very strong) incentive to deposit their research output in OA repositories. Presentations from Belgian OA signing ceremony The presentations from the meeting, How to increase your impact with Open Access (Brussels, February 13, 2007), are now online. This was the meeting at which Belgian university rectors and government ministers signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge. Mary Alice Baish, Librarians as Change Agents: How You Can Help Influence Public Policy in the 110th Congress, Searcher, March 2007. Baish is the Associate Washington Affairs Representative of the American Association of Law Libraries. Excerpt:
"Running scholarly presses as profit centers doesn't make sense" Ben Vershbow, AAUP on open access / business as usual? if:book, March 1, 2007. Excerpt:
I just mailed the March issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter. This issue takes a close look at the February events in Europe, primarily the EC's release of its Communication on OA, and the February events in the US, primarily the National Day of Action for OA. The round-up section briefly notes 65 new developments from the past month.
Government OA sites that limit crawling From Matt Knoll at RevolutionHealth (thanks to Gary Price):
Last July, Susan Nevelow discovered that the National Science Foundation (NSF) blocked the Wayback Machine from copying its web pages, and had pretty much the same questions. Bill Hooker at Open Reading Frame wrote to the NSF webmaster and got a direct answer:
Could there be a similar explanation at the NLM? Slashdot discussion of the OA action in Europe
There's now a slashdot thread on the Brussels conference, the EC Communication, and the OA petition --or at least that's where it starts.
100% of Dutch universities support OA All the universities in the Netherlands have now signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge. See today's announcement from SURF:
Eoin Purcell has put Open Access News on his list of The Top Ten Blogs on the future of books, media and publishing. (Thanks, Eoin.) Stevan Harnad on the emerging EC OA policy Stevan Harnad, Feedback on the Brussels EC Meeting on Open Access, Open Access Archivangelism, March 1, 2007. Excerpt:
Alma Swan, What is new in Open Access, LIBER Quarterly, 16, 3/4 (2006). Self-archived March 1, 2007. Excerpt: Abstract: A number of quite significant developments have taken place in Open Access over the last year or so. I have already documented some of the advances in Open Access publishing and in digital repositories (Swan, 2006). In this article the focus will be upon policy developments, technological developments, new aspects of researcher behaviour, and includes the laying of a few urban myths. OA market research (free content, unfree search) ReportLinker is a new search engine specializing in OA information for market research. The problem is that much of this OA information is corporate spin and PR, useless or misleading for investors. ReportLinker promises to find and highlight the most relevant information. From today's press release:
PS: First-level searching is free but clicking through to results is limited to paying customers. For paying customers, the default is to limit searches to OA content. But users can request to search non-OA content whose links lead to pay-per-view screens.
ERC officially launches its OA mandate Jonathan Amos, European research goes for gold, BBC News, February 27, 2007.
PS: --And not least, the Scientific Council of the ERC has already pledged to adopt an OA mandate for ERC-funded research "as soon as pertinent repositories become operational". User attitudes toward UGC-Infonet Suresh K. Chauhan and Prem Chand, UGC-Infonet: E-Journals Consortium and Indian Academics: The Right Initiative at the Right Time, Library Philosophy and Practice, February 2007. Excerpt:
RIN's strategic goals for public policy on scholarly communication The UK Research Information Network (RIN) has published a new document, Research and the Scholarly Communications Process: Towards Strategic Goals for Public Policy: A Statement of Principles, February 2007. From the RIN press release:
The statement has been signed by some critics of strong OA policy, like ALPSP and STM, and by some friends of strong OA policy, like JISC, the RCUK, and the Wellcome Trust. One reason this kind of agreement is possible is that the statement doesn't directly endorse or oppose OA. From the statement itself:
Comments.
Update. Also see the press releases on the statement from ALPSP and JISC. Seven peer-reviewed OA drug monographs PubDrug, the wiki database of drug information, has been gearing up to publish peer-reviewed drug monographs ever since its launch last November. The first seven monographs are now online. They're all OA for reading, of course, but locked to prevent unreviewed edits. (Thanks to Stewart Brower, creator of PubDrug.) OA archiving for law student scholarship Carol A. Parker, Institutional Repositories Offer New Avenues for Publishing Student Scholarship, Law Librarian Blog, February 28, 2007. Excerpt:
Scott Jaschik, University Presses Take Their Stand, Inside Higher Ed, February 28, 2007. Excerpt:
Ari Friedman's Self Archive Initiative is back online. The original was a wiki that Ari took down when it ran into technical problems. The new version is not a wiki, just the get the content back online, but Ari hopes to solve the technical problems one day and restore the wiki. Note especially the OA posters for your department bulletin boards and hallways. Book on indigenous knowledge accessible to indigenous people Martin Nakata and Marcia Langton (eds.), Australian Indigenous Knowledge and Libraries, UTSePress, undated. An anthology that the press agreed to make OA in order to make it more accessible to indigenous people around the world. (Thanks to Donat Agosti.) UTSePress is the press of University of Technology, Sydney. The American Association of University Presses (AAUP) has released a Statement on Open Access, dated today. Excerpt:
Also see the AAUP's press release. Comments.
Laura Devaney, Open access to public TV content sought, eSchoolNews, February 26, 2007. Excerpt:
More on OA books increasing net sales of print editions Suw Charman, Open publishing - A few questions left, Strange Attractor, February 26, 2007. Excerpt:
NARA wants to raise reproduction fees The US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is proposing to raise its reproduction fees. (Thanks to Klaus Graf.) Excerpt:
Public comments are due by April 27, 2007. Comment. The reproduction fees only apply when NARA staffers have to copy paper or microfilm originals. Hence, you might think that digital records would be OA. But some are and some aren't. NARA is sometimes willing to let private for-profit companies do the digitizing and charge for access. More controversy about SSRN policies James Grimmelmann, SSRN Considered Harmful, a preprint posted to SSRN February 26, 2007.
Also see Grimmelmann's blog summary. For background, see this Cyberprof discussion thread from September 2006 and this blog post by Daniel Solove from November 2006. More on monopoly power, rising prices, and falling access The ARL has published an Issue Brief on Wiley's acquisition of Blackwell, February 26, 2007. Excerpt:
ATLAS Experiment Statement on OA Publishing Scientists running the ATLAS Experiment at CERN have released a Statement on Open Access Publishing. (Thanks to Jens Vigen.) Here's the statement in its entirety (not yet online):
Here's some background on the experiment from its web site:
Comment. Some groups use the term "open access publishing" as a synonym for "open access". But in this case I believe the authors are using the term carefully to refer to OA journals or gold OA. CERN already has a green OA mandate, and the ATLAS experimenters know that it applies to them. In this statement, they are going beyond it to show their support for gold OA. Update. The statement is now online at the ATLAS publications committee web page (scroll to the bottom).
More on the OA diabetes data from Novartis Stephen Pincock, Pharma goes open access, The Scientist, February 26, 2007. Excerpt:
Chris Leonard, Free your research with PhysMath Central, PhysMath Central blog, February 20, 2007. Excerpt:
OA to more public data in the UK The Manchester Information and Associated Services (MIMAS) has received an �8.4 million grant from the UK's Economic & Social Research Council to provide OA to government information. From today's press release:
Graphs of repository statistics OpenDOAR has added 16 new graphs to show the state of the repositories in the directory. From today's announcement:
PS: These are useful, especially (for my purposes) the chart of the growth in the number of repositories listed in the directory. OpenDOAR doesn't chart the number of items on deposit in each listed repository, as ROAR does, and neither directory (yet) makes it easy to learn the total number of items on deposit in all the listed repositories. AHRC plans to adopt an OA mandate Richard Poynder, UK's AHRC to introduce Open Access mandate, Open and Shut? February 26, 2007. Excerpt:
Indexing India's OA repositories India's National Centre for Science Information has launched CASSIR (Cross Archive Search Services for Indian Repositories). CASSIR currently indexes 15 of India's OA, OAI-compliant repositories and is on track to index the rest. (Thanks to Subbiah Arunachalam and Filbert Minj.) Update on the ERC's OA mandate Stevan Harnad, ERC OA Self-Archiving Mandate Pledge Upgraded, a post to several discussion forums, February 25, 2007. Excerpt:
Another call for OA to Canadian research Michael Geist, Open access: Reshaping rules of research, Toronto Star, February 26, 2007. Excerpt:
New OA repository for catalysis research Catalysis Database is a new OA repository from India's National Centre for Catalysis Research. (Thanks to Subbiah Arunachalam.) WIPO warms to the public domain The Byzantine process of WIPO reform has great potential for OA. Unfortunately, it's slow, complicated, largely hidden, and usually uphill. Fortunately, some good news emerges every time to time. Now for example. Here's an excerpt from Jamie Love, WIPO Embraces Reform on Intellectual Property Mission, The Huffington Post, February 23, 2007. Love is the director of Knowledge Ecology International.
Publisher accommodation and resistance to the Wellcome Trust OA policy Jim Till, Compliance with Wellcome Trust�s OA policy, Be openly accessible or be obscure, February 24, 2007. Excerpt:
More on redirecting subscription revenue to OA Heather Morrison, Elsevier Revenue to Open Access, Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics, February 24, 2007. Excerpt:
Variations on gold OA funding and the rise of green OA Heather Morrison, Open access, scholarly communications, and the processing fee model, Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics, February 24, 2007. Excerpt:
University benefits from self-archiving Bernard Rentier, Archivage institutionnel et vitrine bibliographique, Bernard Rentier, February 25, 2007. In this blog post, Rentier --the Rector of the University of Liege-- lists the ways in which universities benefit by capturing their research output in their institutional repositories. Read the original French or Google's English. PS: Does this mean that Liege will soon adopt an OA mandate? Last June Rentier announced that Liege would launch an IR, though he said nothing about what policies it might use to fill it. |